A LOT OF NFL ACTION EXPECTED DURING OFFSEASON

All the stadium stories you missed since my last roundup while you were wondering why New York has all the luck.

“Get ready for a wild offseason,” veteran ESPN reporter John Clayton wrote the other day. His was one of several stories that touched on the NFL in L.A. storyline now that the season has ended.

“The offseason,” he wrote, “may determine whether new stadiums will be built in San Diego, Minnesota and St. Louis, along with revealing whether Los Angeles can move closer to getting a new stadium to attract a team back to its market.”

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Michael Hunt also weighed in on why Los Angeles “is prepared to build a football stadium on spec.”

He wrote: “Not because Los Angeles particularly wants the NFL — it has done without it for a couple of decades — but because it contains the second-most number of television sets in the U.S.”

Sports business experts Rick Horrow and Karla Swatek offered their own take on why Los Angeles is getting a look: baseball.

“Heightening the intrigue in L.A. is widespread speculation that if St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke wins his bid for the Los Angeles Dodgers, he will also attempt to relocate the Rams to L.A.,” they wrote. “There’s likewise speculation that if basketball’s Memphis Grizzlies owner Michael Heisley wins the Dodgers, he’d also be in a strong position to bid for an NFL franchise in Los Angeles.”

San Diego U-T columnist Nick Canepa returned from the Super Bowl thinking the Rams are the ideal team to move to Los Angeles. “That is the strong rumor now,” he wrote. “Rams back to L.A.”

In San Diego, county Supervisor Ron Roberts kept the drive for a new stadium in the news last week.

KPBS previewed Roberts’ State of the County address and repeated Roberts’ hope that the stadium is built in cooperation by the city and county.

“We are looking at how does, perhaps, the stadium generate revenues that we don’t have today, that we could then take and plow back into getting a stadium built,” Roberts said. “You create value and you use that value to get the thing you want, in this case a stadium.”

Roberts said he’ll meet with the city to discuss a possible financing plan this week. Don’t expect to see anything for months, though. It’s unlikely the city, county or team would negotiate in public even after the self-imposed March 31 deadline for the city to complete its plan. Interestingly, when he gave his speech, Roberts didn’t mention the stadium at all.

In Santa Clara, city leaders have now vowed to open a new 49ers stadium in 2014, a year earlier than planned. The San Jose Mercury News reported the new timetable is a result of a new deal with stadium builders.

“The firms would be penalized $6 million for each 49ers game missed, plus daily fines that could hit $20 million,” the story said. “The penalties are harsh enough that the firms could actually lose money on the deal if they don’t finish the project on time. On the other hand, if they complete the stadium in time for the 2014 preseason, the 49ers will reward the firms with a $5 million bonus.”

Even San Francisco’s restaurateurs are lamenting the 49ers’ distasteful defection. One wrote, “You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that restaurants would benefit from both the stadium build-out and the Super Bowl. What’s this have to do with the restaurant business? Plenty. Empty stadiums and hotels mean fewer tourist dollars at lunch and dinner in the City of San Francisco.”

In Oakland, it’s Hail Mary time to get that team a new stadium, report San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross.

Oakland “is on the verge of putting up $3 million for the designers of Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis — site of Sunday’s Super Bowl — to work their magic and come up with a new stadium and sports complex out at the Coliseum,” they wrote.

For more items and links to every story, visit
utsandiego.com/stadium. And for more timely stadium coverage, factoids and fun, follow me on Twitter @SDuncovered.